A woman remains in a critical condition after two died in the accident in mountains in Australia.
Image source, EPA
A British family caught in a deadly landslide while hiking in Australia were in the “wrong place at the wrong time”, a local tour guide has said.
The mother remains in a critical condition while her injured 14-year-old son has undergone surgery and is now in a stable condition.
The 49-year-old father and another son, aged nine, died at the scene.
Tour guide Graham Chapman said: “This beautiful family from England were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Landslides are common in the Blue Mountains, about 100 miles from Sydney, and have been made more likely by recent heavy rain, Mr Chapman said.
“Maybe another 50 metres either side or a delay during the day, this wouldn’t have happened,” he said.
The alarm was raised on Monday afternoon by a 15-year-old girl after the landslide killed her father and younger brother, leaving her mother and older brother critically injured.
The teenage girl was said to be “extremely distressed” and is being kept in hospital under observation.
The two bodies were recovered from the mountains, near the popular walking spot of Wentworth Falls, at about 09:30 on Tuesday.
Image source, PA Media
A year dominated by storms and floods
by Phil Mercer, in the Blue Mountains
Torrential rain has returned to the Blue Mountains. Thick bands of low cloud have moved in, obscuring buildings and bushland.
As the rain beats down near Wentworth Falls, car headlights occasionally emerge from the mist. But this popular tourist destination is mostly quiet: walking tracks and some roads have been closed.
Months of heavy downpours are likely to have been a key factor in the tragedy involving the family of five from Britain.
They came on a day of rare sunshine in a year that’s been dominated in much of eastern Australia by storms and floods.
In this World Heritage area, the ground is sodden and signs warn of the dangers of rockfalls and landslips. The earth and the famous sandstone cliffs have become saturated, and still it rains.
Landslides here are not uncommon – but rarely, if ever, have they devastated the lives of an entire family.
The family had set out on the hike on Monday in bright, sunny weather but the Blue Mountains had previously been lashed by weeks of heavy rain.
Mr Chapman said: “I’ve seen so many landslides I couldn’t tell you how many. But the thing is with landslides here in the mountains, you don’t actually get to hear about them a lot because it’s so remote.
“Here in the mountains, it can change in the blink of an eye and sadly for the English family, that’s exactly what happened the other day.”
He said he had cried when he heard the news of their deaths, adding: “We’ve only just opened up our international borders, and to know that that family has come to our country and that this has happened on our soil, man, it’s just heart breaking.”
New South Wales premier Dominic Perrottet told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation the incident was “tragic” and said he would be seeking advice as to whether the walking track should have been open.
The Department of Environment and Heritage in the state said the area was closed to the public until further notice and a “comprehensive review” would be undertaken.
It said it had a “world-class” programme in place to assess the risks of incidents such as landslides but “it is not possible to predict and eliminate all natural risks”.
The walking trail had been inspected days before the landslide as part of a routine assessment, the department said.
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